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Aug 31 2022

# London Grip New Poetry – Autumn 2022

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The Autumn 2022 issue of LONDON GRIP NEW POETRY features:

*Michael W. Thomas *Hilary Mellon *Lisa Reily *Lesley Burt
*Bruce Barnes *Anna Mioduchowska *Martin Bennett *Robert Cole
*Alan Dunnett *Josh Ekroy * Sarah Lawson *Philip Dunkerley
*Michael Caylo-Baradi *Maria C. McCarthy *Simon Alderwick *Pam Thompson
*Judith Wozniak *Rustin Larson *Tony Dawson *Clifford Liles
*Marilyn Ricci *Kate Noakes *Jackson *Nadira Wallace
*Norton Hodges *Sue Wallace-Shaddad *Chrissy Banks *Gordon Scapens
*David Keyworth *Jon Kemsley *Keith Nunes *Rachel Clyne
*Jill Sharp *Benjamin Rosser *Anne Bailey *Lydia Harris

Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors.
Biographical notes on contributors can be found here

London Grip New Poetry appears early in March, June, September & December

A printer-friendly version of this issue can be found at
LG New Poetry Autumn 2022

SUBMISSIONS: please send up to THREE poems plus a brief bio to poetry@londongrip.co.uk
Poems should be in a SINGLE Word attachment or else included in the message body
Submission windows are: December-January, March-April, June-July & September-October

Editor’s notes

This issue begins with railway journeys involving hasty departures ahead of approaching threats and arrivals in places where there is no guarantee of a welcome. Even while in transit the traveler may be troubled by disturbing images beyond the train windows or the knowledge that the so-called “permanent way” can be easily and arbitrarily done away with.

Yet, as subsequent poems also remind us, staying put is not always an option. Sometimes the status quo is subject to external forces of change – but should one simply wait to see if matters will really turn out for the better? On the other hand, existing conditions may be a consequence of internal restraints imposed by self-appointed and possibly obsolete authorities (temporal or spiritual). Should these be resisted? And, if so, how and by whom?

Our autumn poets engage, directly or obliquely, with such questions in a variety of forms and settings. We hope our readers will find some stimulating, helpful or even comforting insights relevant to the present uncertain times.

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
London Grip poetry editor
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    Michael W. Thomas: Like the first bird

    A man gets off a train in a town he doesn’t know.
    Already others are pulling their mornings
    around them.  Light hollows channels
    for first footsteps, the drag of crates
    to hold shop doors ajar.  Greetings are tuned
    as to that very moment a week ago,
    crossing beeps haunt their little green men
    on the usual frozen jog.

    Miles back,
    the man left his history handkerchief-neat
    in the buffet-car, alongside a sandwich
    with more than the usual fight.
    Now he makes first use of himself,
    stares with birthday eyes
    at bellied awnings, a parked van
    letting its indicators goof,
    a group, small, anxious, elderly
    beneath a sign for recycling.

    Soon he might lose himself in wonder
    at the tumbling heart of a moment
    and try big things like buying a paper
    or looking for a street
    whose name he hears on the ripening air
    and likes the sound of.  Or perhaps
    he’ll stop a body and tell them
    such bits of his name as he remembers,
    ask how they go about expanding
    till they touch the sides of each hour.

    The man thinks
    of someone uncovering all he was
    where he tucked it against the leavings of bread –
    and helplessly laying off what they were
    to become what they can’t yet know.
    And hopes that, even so,
    they’ll by and by swing down into the day
    as to a child with open gaze
    who spreads hands and says,
    forget all that…just look…just look.

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    Hilary Mellon: The Station

    this place again
    of meetings and farewells
    			       where trains arrive
    			       where trains depart
    and old lovers wait forever
    on the platforms of the heart

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    Lisa Reily: against windows

    breathing interspersed with the rattle of a train,
    bare trees spattered with nests,
    a lady in a carriage crying into a phone;
    wet brick of red, stone-crumbled stories.

    a mouse sits stunned in a dirty yellow dustpan,
    blinking eyes slow from its shock rescue;
    i take it outside, whisper to it, gently,
    but when it sees the night sky and damp grass,
    it leaps ten times its height,
    smacks onto the ground,
    before it scurries into dry leaves against the house.

    blond sandstone buildings, grey hills, canals
    and steel locks; her father is dead.
    silver thread, a shiny scarf, like a gypsy.
    £5 for a hand car wash in a tesco carpark.
    mouse by the front door, still warm,
    a shrunken version of its former self, eye sockets hollow,
    little legs frozen in a scurry.

    i remember the pigeon i rescued on the road home,
    surrounded, attacked by other birds;
    when i cradled it in my jumper on the front seat of my car,
    it suddenly awoke, flapped desperately
    against the windows; i nearly drove into a bush.

    green fields and sheep, an owl’s silhouette in the woods,
    doors open and close
    to a slim woman in beige trousers and a burgundy lambswool coat;
    i get into her land rover and apologise
    for my muddy boots on the car mat.
    oh don’t worry, i’ve taken it to the eastern europeans, she says,
    and we usually get so mucky when we go out beating.

    there’s something to be said
    about the friendliness of the country.
    beating gives you a chance to be in the outdoors,
    to see the beauty of wildlife, meet new people,
    flush unwary birds into view.

    shoes fused to feet, surgically removed,
    a romanian man is electrocuted in a shower,
    a brown-skinned girl waits behind a caravan.
    dawn stairs, a tiny grey shrew,
    its clawed toes, pointed snout i’ve never seen before,
    stiff and weighty from death;
    and a flailing robin
    caught in the teeth of our neighbour’s cat.

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    Lesley Burt: The old line

    Alice opens the cottage door and blinks into acutely angled sunlight. The railway
    was death to wild boar  and unicorns, she says.  The door swings in sharp breeze,
    hinges  squeak for lack of  WD40 and  rooks croak  undertones.  The jogger, who
    paused to stretch outside her holly hedge, looks up. Sycamore leaves shiver and
    fall – their shadows waver over high-viz T-shirt and bright white Nikes.

    His path  winds ahead,  a collage of bronze,  sepia, tan, mustard. You are heading
    the  wrong  way, says  Alice.  Believe me,  I  have tried to escape among  the oaks,

    silver birches and sweet chestnuts,yet all ways bring me to the cottage.The jogger,

    alarmed, checks  his  laces, begins a warm-up run-on-the-spot.  No, he  says, I am

    familiar with the path that was a railway line,torn up long ago by Beeching.Here’s

    the thing, says Alice.

    You seem a mere matter of  fabric.  He sprints away without looking back.  I, on the

    other hand, Alice tells the rooks,am in and of words. I make the story and therefore

    its meaning. The jogger disappears where brambles and beeches lean into his path.

    Alice hurries  to the  gate as  if  she would give  chase but  finds herself  back on the

    doorstep.Rooks settle beside tousled remains of nests,witness the closing of the door.

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    Bruce Barnes:  Suitcases at Sambor, near Lviv, (circa 1900)
    (Imagining  an incident on my grandfather’s journey to Germany,

    following anti-Jewish pogroms in the Ukraine)

    It’s his destination as the last century slams
    like a train door to begin a new  one;
    the train on the other  platform starts
    the illusion that he and the world are on the move.
    As steam disperses, a station sign finds a name
     for itself – but who is there to read cyrillic?
    The crowd, like golems, go in a puff of smoke.

    They return with their burdens of leaving,
    edging towards an exit or intending
    to  travel on.  Some seem half-monstrous
    with kitbags  concealing their faces,
    others overwhelmed by their knapsacks
    creep forward, each movement presaging
    a fall.  He’s travelling light with valuables

    on his person and a suitcase that snugs his palm.
    He has written his name along its lip
    as far as that last thin ‘R’. Destination labels
    have decayed to none, catches are stiff
    so thieves won’t open them. He recalls
    packing the book he was reading, a change
    of clothes, and a folded prayer  shawl.

    The crowd, though gridlocked, parts at a single
    pristine suitcase, its shell unscarred by travel;
    sunlight laughs with its brass caps at each corner.
    He asks the throng, knowing there will be
    no takers; he outstares the case
    to invoke its owner and contents
    watches as facades of cities burst open.

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    Anna Mioduchowska: Listening

    Sirens in a besieged city
    don’t bother with pretence.
    To hear their terrible song
    is to feel time scroll
    at breakneck speed,
    to grab what is most dear
    and beg the earth
    for shelter,

    it is to hang onto
    the nearest load-bearing wall
    as you once hung onto
    your father’s neck
    at a fireworks display
    crowning a perfect summer day,
    your mother’s soft hands
    cupped over your ears,

    it is to be torn
    between wishing for
    warm beeswax to block
    all sound, and straining
    each of the thirty thousand
    nerve cells inside
    your cochlea

    to estimate
    the speed of the missile
    whistling toward you.

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    Martin Bennett: Outside Kharkiv
    After a photograph by Paolo Pellegrin

    Further movement denied,
    straddling one side of the road
    a hideous chassis,
    buckled tracks, charred wheels
    severed from their gears

    At the other side
    the decapitated turret,
    flattish, plated and scaled
    like the pate
    of some Jurassic reptile’s –

    Gawping roundly upward,
    the twin now hatchless holes
    in which stood
    or crouched
    its symbiotic brain
    and eyes –

    A vacant set of tubes –

    Deadly proboscis
    dead in turn, direly diagonal
    to evacuated cottages –

    Mortar still wet,
    a neat suddenly uncompleted
    stretch of wall –

    Although it’s May,
    birch-trees as if afraid
    to put forth leaves –

    Splinter and tangle –

    Colours drained to grey,
    desolately Baroque –

    In the background
    what might or might not be
    a church’s spire

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    Robert Cole: Ikons

    They haunted the meads; beyond the kissing gate
    In the churchyard, holy holy of heavenly angels

    Those tombstone angels singing in a misericord;
    The belfry ringing a carillon for our wedding day

    Stained glass saints in turquoise silk & lapis lazuli;
    Spangled in the shadow of a cedar of Lebanon –

    In St Stephen’s vestry the elements made ready
    Fragments of wafer the wine assessed by hagioscope

    Priestcraft dating from the church of Constantinople;
    Fighting the infidel on the field of Megiddo -

    Crossing the mountains of the Pyrenees, a vision
    Of Our Lady witnessing the crucifixion – on the road

    To the hillside: feldspar, onyx, lunar eclipse in an ogive;
    Galilee Galileo’s vision of paradise, encircled heaven.

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***

    Alan Dunnett: Fight with an Angel
    Genesis 32: 22-32

    Extremely reluctant to commit to this
    on the grounds that I might lose.
    Note: address this worldly sense of status.

    He's standing still, smiling pleasantly:
    condescension, nothing less. I would like
    to crush him - but how? Note: if I leave now,

    it will look bad. Address. Address. Goddamn.
    I walk up to him, set my leg behind his
    and bend him back. He never stops staring

    with a smile but, as he resists me,
    I see some angelic sweat starting
    which smells of ambergris on the turn.

    He clasps my shoulder and my throat
    and makes to twist me. Note: if I give now,
    it will be too soon. People are watching.

    I stare at his stare and smile and bend
    his knee. The hard flesh of the back of his leg
    goes over my leg, which is rooted to the ground.

    And now it is unfair for time is stilled
    and the sky becomes solid and then tears apart.
    I hear loud, uneven voices. Note: don't give up.

    I bend his knee again
                                although my hip is out.

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    Josh Ekroy: Private Prayer

    Please note that Paternoster Square
    is a private space. It is the rented
    home of London’s Stock Exchange.
    You may enter the area, but there is no
    automatic “Public Right Of Way”,
    and permission can be withdrawn with-
    out notice. You may walk through,
    and enjoy a game of ping pong should
    you wish, but Security Guards will
    remove you if it is deemed necessary.
    Be aware that the owners have
    exclusive rights over the Paternoster
    brand. Accordingly, no-one may
    exploit it without written permission,
    regardless of whether they use the Latin
    or English versions. It is therefore
    a breach of the law to recite “The
    Our Father”, or any part thereof. Any
    person intoning, chanting or uttering it
    may incur a fine or imprisonment.
    As a gesture of good will, The Dean
    and Chapter of nearby St Paul’s
    have been granted a special licence
    to include the petition in their
    services. But this will be revoked
    if it is deployed for any purpose
    except that of religious tourism.

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    Sarah Lawson: Wivel’s Wife, a triptych
    “I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems
    without signing them, was often a woman.”
                                                Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own
                                              I.
    The priest showed us some pages the monks had made
    With their quills, goose-given, and liquid that dried
    In many shapes. The priest could look from side
    To side and say the words the monks had laid
    Among the shapes. The priest said they might fade—
    The colours bright with sense, the pages wide—
    And even if the men who wrote them died,
    The words were always. Things passed, he said, words stayed.
    Going home, my husband Wivel said
    That all the same you had to make those lines
    Speak, and what if all the men were dead
    Who knew the secret of what our priest divines?
    The yellowed page is dumb, the meaning dark,
    If you can’t hear the meaning in the mark.
                                         II.
    But then I said to Wivel, “Why can’t we
    “Take lessons from the priest and learn to read
    “Those marks?” Then Wivel laughed, “You think that we’d
    “Have any chance? They’re not for us to see
    “And understand, and not for women!” he
    Winked at me as though I agreed
    It was a fact that women would not need
    To learn those secrets, least of all, not me.
    But I thought otherwise. I got a nun
    To teach me letters, show me how the words
    Are made and how to line them up to run
    Across a page in ordered docile herds.
    Wivel was proudly cross and inward stung
    When I wrote some poems in our local tongue.
                                       III.
    I wrote more poems, learned to make them mean.
    Some were private, some were songs we sang.
    The more I wrote the more I got the hang
    Of writing silent sounds that could be seen.
    I wrote on parchment, paper, vellum, wax,
    I wrote for friends and strangers both; I wrote
    Some witty ditties full of lines to quote.
    I wrote about emotions, deeds, and facts.
    A nobleman was touched, commissioned more,
    But soon they went their independent rounds
    Without a name. Who chose, and on what grounds,
    The words to read, their author to ignore?
    The words of Wivel’s wife achieved some fame,
    But they went down in history minus name.

    Sarah Lawson: Suppose Princip Had Missed

    People would say later, a forgettable footnote,
    an insignificant detail,
    that a minor royal from some country or other
    had nearly been shot once
    sitting in his car, being driven through streets
    in some city many years ago.
    Only historians of irrelevant anecdotes
    have ever heard of the gunman with poor aim
    who only managed to dent the gas tank
    and then was collared by the police,
    who gave him a good talking to,
    silly boy, and he promised not to try it again.

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    Philip Dunkerley: The Great Garcez Circus of Cognitive Dissonance

    With a small-boy mentality, the small boy sneaks in under the flap of the Big Top.
    Above, unknown to him, the main truss holding it up is a misconception.
    Passing under the seats, he squeezes through into a gangway of dissimulation
    and finds a place between a couple of wrong ideas and a conditional verb.

    The lights come up with a great fantasy of trumpets. Clauses with red noses
    go round and round on monocycles, spotlights circle like self-delusion.
    The ring-master stands in the centre of the ‘O’, whipping up inconsistencies.
    Then the first act comes on, the Globe of Errors with doubtful assumptions.

    A man, dressed in blatant mistakes, drives in and out on an unlikely event
    as stories full of half-truths shoot out with loud explosions from the exhaust pipe.
    One of the clauses is caught in an inadvertently mistaken position
    and, to general hilarity, trips on a misunderstanding and lands on a wrong tack.

    Next comes the high wire act of rumours, half-truths and risky forecasts.
    A beautiful girl appears in a misapprehension highlighted against a halo effect .
    She steps carefully, anxious not to disturb the crowd’s subjunctive mood,
    and reaches the far side safely to the sound of excessive crossed purposes.

    After they erect a cage of denials and tensions, in comes the black puma
    louring at the crowd with incongruity and false premises. The trainer appears,
    wearing a silver article of faith and a black mix-up. He cracks his narrative fallacy;
    the beast sits up and displays feelings of aggressive over-confidence.

    The crowd goes wild, the small boy thrills with discrepancy and false variance.
    To thunderous applause, the Magnificent Meganomics materialises amid
    smoke and mirrors and performs a validity illusion with double contradictions;
    no one notices his misconstruction. He feigns several clashes of disparity.

    The grand finale brings back the main clauses on a wild goose chase.
    Everyone thrills to wrong predictions and hindsight illusions. Question marks
    explode on all sides. Misjudgements, misbeliefs and miscalculations throw
    themselves about. Dazed by deception the small boy escapes back to reality.

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    Michael Caylo-Baradi: The Last Show

    The circus glides
    into another night
    of empty seats,
    into another family
    walking towards
    the exit, looking
    bored like the woman
    tending the ticket-box,
    curling her hair
    around the movie
    on her mobile phone,
    around the usual plot,
    where the elephant
    in the room has finally
    made some noise

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    Maria C. McCarthy: The caramel cows of County Clare

    The colour of an Everlasting Toffee Strip
    they melt into fudge if licked.

    Feasting slowly on the deep green,
    their milk falls as soft brown cream,

    swirled by sudden Burren rain,
    churned by Atlantic winds.

    Maria C. McCarthy: The Wild Atlantic Way

    The windsculpted trees
    of the Burren bow, burdened
    like shawled old women

    Flashes of yellow
    draped with seaweed fingers grip
    in the limestone grikes

    A rucksacked hiker
    strides straight-backed, rainhood drawn tight
    heading for Fanore

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    Simon Alderwick: any day now

    When the sun rises you best be ready.
    A passport, a gun, five thousand dollars.
    Keep telling yourself you can start anew.
    Life begins in your head. Count to ten.
    A passport, a gun, four thousand dollars.
    You must follow the system. Please sign here.
    Keep telling yourself nothing is real.
    It will never happen to you.
    You're not on the system. Please wait here.
    A finger presses a panic button.
    What happens next is anybody's guess.
    The sound of rain. The aftermath.
    A finger squeezes, a trigger, deletes.
    Air escapes your lungs, birds fly.
    The sound of rain. And after that?
    The sun rises, a new day starts.

    Simon Alderwick: the kids

    the kids are sleeping when you leave them.
    you leave an imprint on their foreheads.
    bruise their tiny hearts.
    will they be healed when you return?

    no one can see the weight you carry.
    you walk thru airport security,
    standing naked as they scan you.
    does it show you are a father?
    that you left your kids at home?

    you talk into your smartphone.
    you smile into the camera.
    the kids are getting older.
    technology is good.

    you’re walking on a sandy beach.
    so much sand, so much time.
    another day off, another
    day you called in sick.

    you’re doing it for something.
    you’re doing it for them.
    not all sacrifices are visible.
    yours, or theirs, or mine.

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    Pam Thompson: Another poem called ‘Absence’

    She had no idea she was the only child
    in school who had never been on a plane
    or whose parents didn’t own a car.

    She travelled in her head though.
    The science lab was Mexico,
    the lit Bunsen-burners, leaping fountains.

    In the art room, Mr Herbert
    was Vincent, telling her not to believe
    everything she read about him

    and if she wanted to paint skies
    like that, with whirling planets
    and several suns she damn well could.

    She roamed best on the page
    watching her new handwriting flow
    in black ink, a trail of backtracking ants.

    So what if she was the only child
    reading out her story on the school-hall stage,
    the caretaker pretending not to hear.

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    Judith Wozniak: One Day

    At school, they call it her auntie anorak.
    It’s so big it slides off the bony hanger

    of her shoulders. They laugh at the colour,
    sticking plaster pink. Her best friend

    has a strawberry red coat she lets her stroke,
    sink her fingers into the soft pile.

    Her teacher brings them food parcels in her car,
    sometimes she slips in a storybook from class.

    There’s a spot on the kerb, outside the Co-op,
    her brother found, where they can pick up

    free Wi-Fi and watch Stampy on YouTube
    with the old phone he uses for homework.

    When she feels sad, he tells her one day
    he will be rich, with a gold Mercedes,

    like the man they hide from on Tuesdays
    who knocks to collect the loan money.

    Judith Wozniak: Tactical Voting

    My mother is ready for them when they knock,
    darts me the laser look that means  keep quiet.

     A man in a pin-striped suit raises his hat,
    smiles down at us flashing a gold tooth.

    I hope I can count on your support madam.
    Mum puts on her special telephone voice,

    explains she is recently widowed — all alone
    with a child. She’s not sure how she will manage

    to vote, dabs her eyes with the lace handkerchief
    tucked under her watchstrap. We are offered a lift

    in the campaign car with a loudhailer on the roof.
    The man stamps his shiny shoes to keep warm

    while she collects her coat from upstairs, dithers
    with her hat in the hallstand mirror, fusses over

    my buttons, adjusts my Alice band bonnet,
    threads mittens on a string through my sleeves.

    We slide along the slippery leather bench seat
    in the back of the car. It’s already getting dark.

    At the Polling Station she takes her time inside
    the wobbly wooden booth with tiny pencils on strings.

    Later she tells my father how she hoodwinked them.
    She often talks to his photo on the mantelshelf .

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***

    Rustin Larson: Pie Pan Tambourines

    The bananas in the fruit bowl
    have more votes at the moment
    than do the apples. The slovenly
    packets of fast food taco sauce
    wait outside. The atmosphere
    is tense. Meanwhile, the sun
    shines on the gravel path between
    residencies on the island of the violent
    latex bubble. I, out of curiosity,
    open the canister of pitted prunes
    and look inside. So, that's where
    they have been hiding.
    My aunt writes that she lost her bullets
    in Texas. I send her a hug emoticon.
    My sister posts a drawing of a bouquet
    of viruses. I send her a thumbs up.
    I ring and ding my teaspoon
    to the hard surface of the table.
    The atmosphere waits for the launch
    of the first Mercury mission.
    Evangelists fear the exhaust will catch
    the air on fire. My aunt drives her '57
    Chev to the reservoir and howls
    like a teenager. She gives an orphan
    a ride back to the asylum.
    She gets paid in tranquilizers.
    At the roadhouse, the band dresses
    in prom tuxedos and plays all the Buddy Holly
    tunes on cigar box guitars and junkyard drums
    and pie pan tambourines.

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***

    Tony Dawson: Life on the Streets

    A fairytale crone,
    dressed in black
    from head to toe,
    leans on a walking frame
    in a busy street in Seville,
    holding out her hand,
    an avatar of woe.
    Like the melting, evil,
    Witch of the West
    in the Wizard of Oz,
    and just as tiny,
    her magic’s waned
    because the shoppers
    hurry by as if she’s invisible.

    On another street
    a homeless man
    is hunched in the shadow
    of the Church of All Saints,
    a gargoyle fallen
    from his perch
    on the cornice.
    The old lurcher,
    wheezing by his side,
    is just as gaunt,
    no longer able
    to daunt anyone.
    The man’s eyes are dead,
    staring straight ahead,
    yet registering nothing.

    In the alleyway called
    Loves’ Passage,
    which adjoins
    Bitterness street—
    what sardonic wit
    gave them such names? —
    another man is sleeping
    under a grubby blanket
    on a piece of foam rubber
    inside a cardboard box,
    perhaps dreaming of a banquet.
    Passers-by steer well clear,
    consumed as they are
    by irrational fear.

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***

    Clifford Liles: La Notte del Redentore

    I wander this scaffold of cobbled alleys,
    sombre streets of turned keys. I hear faint sounds,
    the bowing and sobbing of violins.
    A wide canal, slick as eels, blocks my path.
    On the far side, between palazzos drowned
    in time, with rotted doors, rusted moorings,
    lies a piazza. There revellers dance
    in a skirl of damask, wear beaked half-masks.
    Were invitations laid on silk pillows?
    Not so for me. Their paper lanterns soar,
    candles guttering. Unseen, I pass. Men
    carouse with women dressed in crimson basques.
    I am fate, luck on a merry-go-round,
    slapping red crosses on the chosen doors.

    Note: The Feast of the Most Holy Redeemer Redentore was inaugurated in 1576 to commemorate
    the end of the terrible plague  which killed 50,000 people,  including the great painter Titian. It has
    subsequently been held annually. This poem is a Bref Double, a fourteen-line French poetic form.

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***

    Marilyn Ricci: Revenant

    When I finally get there, the house is in darkness
    so I turn the key softly, feel for the light switch,
    flick it. He must have taken the bulb so if
    anyone comes they’ll think the electric is off,
    but I can see the boiler in the kitchen is on.

    I close the door, dig in my bag for my phone, tap
    on the torch: the bars of the stair balusters are intact,
    the mirror still cracked, but down the hallway
    there’s a pool of water coming from the cupboard
    under the stairs. Just as I thought there might be.

    I open the door and there she is: lips pulled
    back in an uncertain smile, wanting to please.
    She sits on a steel-framed chair, hands in her lap,
    American Tan tights under a plain beige skirt,
    long-collared white blouse printed with freesias,
    completely encased in a clear block of ice.

    I switch on the heating, go in the front room and wait.
    Eventually I hear her kitten heels on the tiles
    and she appears: clothes sodden, face streaming.
    I fetch a towel from the kitchen and hand it to her.
    I prayed you’d come back for me, she says, wrapping
    her hair, tucking in the end exactly the way I still do.

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***

    Kate Noakes: Man-looking

    I should’ve listened to the rain on the garden room roof.
    If I had, I’d have heard its tune change from tinny notes
    to drumming stair rods frightening man and dog from their nap.

    But I was away in noise-cancelling headphones,
    listening to the gentle inflow and outflow of my breath
    and thinking of nothing more than that.

    It’s taken me years to reach this place
    of safety and I don’t go there often enough.

    Never shock someone back to the world.
    It’s a cruelty too far, even if water is pouring
    through glass panes, even if she’s getting wet,
    OK, perhaps if she is getting wet,
    but not because you can’t see the bucket that is
    always under the sink.

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***

    Jackson: The closed blinds

    After the awkward Zoom goodbye,
    the empty screen

    The echoes of their
    voices in headset headspace

    The air conditioner,
    the closed blinds

    The work still left to do

    A craving for chips

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***

    Nadira Wallace: Break

                                 i.

    Swimming near Barcombe Mills––
    your face a pale flame as I flickered also
    with what waited unsure
    beyond the moment,
    and the river, which was like a living ornament
    hung and spiraled
    about our
    crosswise, elated eye-light.

                              ii.

    Hours before I should get up
    I start remembering the trick
    when we slept whereby
    darkness––huge between pinprick stars––
    became your braided hair that I
    could take in my fist
    and tug softly
    until we felt braced and surely somewhere.

                             iii.

    There I was
    sitting perfectly mistaken,
    palms pressed to eyes so I would not see
    your closeness cordoned off––
    lilting denim collar,
    mouth a sort of horizonal mauve––
    before pain leapt flare-like from its word
    to clean me out further.

                                 iv.

    I wake greyed
    far from where we used to sprint,
    sidekicks for the clouds.
    Definitely no human nearby now
    I can feel,
    but instead only
    the dim-snowy,
    hovered promise of our grave world laid
    in the arms of something higher.

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***

    Norton Hodges: Welcome, Judy

    You can’t take the toiletries or steal
    the hangers. All the shelves are open.
    There are no drawers. The screen already
    knows your name. The window’s shut tight.

    How many hours sitting on your hotel bed
    checking your messages, reading the menu,
    dozing, unable to concentrate on your book,
    waiting for your non-modular life to begin?

    Where did that time go? You were never there.
    You were just passing through unrooted
    and what you leave as you wheel out your trolley case
    is a bin, neatly packed with all you have left behind.

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***

    Sue Wallace-Shaddad: Interiors
    After Vilhelm Hammershoi

    I used to sit like this for hours
    my head buried in a book.

    Even the polished dining table
    is familiar, that half-moon

    set against the wall, one leg
    shadowed on the floor.

    The panelled door’s open
    and in the palette of dove-grey,

    I feel the quiet of Ida’s presence;
    in other paintings, the silence

    when she’s left the room.
    The interiors give no clue

    to her being. Vilhelm never
    shows her expression,

    always portraying her
    from side or back,

    a woman with no say.
    If she turned around

    she might complain
    of how he uses her,

    a piece of furniture
    in his domestic vision.

    Sue Wallace-Shaddad: Unbuttoning
    After ‘Springtime’ by Claude Monet

    Dress buttoned up, decorative,
    her bonnet shades her face.

    She’s engulfed in pink and white,
    a froth of cherry blossom.

    Behind her book, beneath
    those sumptuous frills,

    her heart is beating fast
    as she contemplates

    her future. If she marries
    her books will get shelved.

    Unwed, her body intact,
    no child of hers will roam

    this garden. It’s time to stop
    stalling, time to decide

    whether she’ll unbutton
    sufficiently to allow him in.

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    Chrissy Banks: Self-Portrait

    You see her at once,
    this wisp of a woman
    in a white Sunday dress.

    She’s walked to the end of the path
    and stands staring out over the lake.
    Alone, in that haunted place.

    Overhead, the pallor of a morning sky
    though it could be any time,
    any year before time was numbered,

    the lake so still you doubt it has ever felt
    the lash of a fish’s tail. Silent enough that
    a bird’s cry – unexpected

    as a hook in your mouth
    could spin you around.
    The lake is the colour of loneliness.

    Was she lonely? Afraid?
    Having dared to swallow it all,
    she walks back the way she came,

    starts to paint the scene:
    sky’s wan whites and greys;
    her oiled brush stroking it into misted life,

    climbing the turrets of rock;
    plunging the depths of the lake;
    finally fixing her small self centre-frame.

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***

    Gordon Scapens: Out Of Reach

    She explores rooms
    in child-like wonder,
    her own house a story
    of a strange new world.

    Cocooned in a time capsule
    of the last thirty seconds,
    she would sit down
    but has no invitation.

    The place is unfamiliar
    but reminds her of somewhere
    she must have once visited
    and photographs are strangers.

    A kind man smiles now
    and tests her hand,
    obviously mistaking
    who she might be.

    Kindness is in the offer
    and her voice answers
    with words sounding like
    someone back in her past.

    This voice wants to know
    if who she is might be away
    and could she be returning.
    She wonders about his tears.

    She exists the wrong side
    of a door through which
    life runs away without her.
    She’s here but out of reach.

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    David Keyworth: Photograph of Alice at 18

     She avoids the camera’s eye
    as if it were a pestering boy

    She is a river-bend away from
    the grass-bank daguerreotypes.

    Is she deflecting the Reverend’s gaze
    or helping him mourn her childhood’s end?

    Would she love to refocus the looking glass?
    Shut Wonderland in a spade-dark room?

    Is it my eyes she is avoiding now?
    Her smile stretched like a dormouse

    David Keyworth: Afternoon Recital

    No one sees him when he hits the right notes,
    before the seasiders and landladies
    tide through the Opera House doors,
    before he inserts the deliberate duff chords

    as precisely as a haddock de-boner
    deftly as a schoolboy placing jellyfish
    and seashells in intervals along the promenade.
    For now, he’s the Thelonious Monk

    of Blackpool, the maestro, his gurning mask -
    a bag of scrunched toffee apples -
    hung up on a peg with the other stage effects.
    He signs off with a tailcoat flourish

    bows to empty seats, says they’re the most
    sophisticated audience he’s ever entertained
    before he exits through the open wings
    to his dressing room mirror, his funnyman suit.

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***

    Jon Kemsley: Old Man with a Banjo

    It still strikes me as charmingly funny
    that the classics he was so nearly playing
    didn't sound so great on the one string,
    but his hat would fill with generosity
    and good humour like the garden of a pub
    mid afternoon so maybe funny isn't the word.
    Although I know for a fact that his wife
    packed him off with a lunch every day
    because I saw her do it from the boot
    of a battered estate any number of times.
    He seemed happy enough. The dullards
    from the tourist board eventually
    ran him out of town. A real shame.

    John Kemsley: Intercity

    I saw it, saw him,
    from my window. The line, that line
    passes close. The bridge with iron railings
    and a preservation order. Open to the weather.
    I was told that he’d been drinking. He
    ran up and over and down and across. He –

    They’re very fast.

    threw himself, he –

    It happens near enough
    monthly now.

    What his problem was
    I wouldn’t know. I was unprepared.
    Feet up, meeting over, scanning the classifieds
    in a nylon shirt. Wet down my back and
    across my shoulders. I hadn’t
    touched a drop. Nor since.

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***

    Keith Nunes: Waves in passing

    The balcony shudders as if a chill has run thru it,
    He steps off it and back into the doorway, watches
    The flotilla of fishing boats crash into monstrous waves,
    He believes the sea to be the greatest of serial killers,

    He’s come to Guyana, to Georgetown, to dig up some roots,
    To figure out if he should be here, or somewhere else,
    All he found were more strangers, more strangeness,
    A few connected his name to somebody who had passed away,
    All he felt was that he was passing,
    Nothing new in that, his past was full of passing up
    Opportunities, passing on relationships, passing out hope and
    Taking it back,

    A dense-salty-humid breeze makes a poor attempt at
    Drying out his sweaty shirt,
    He looks out to sea, far out into the Atlantic swelling
    With murderous intent,

    He steps onto the rickety balcony a few floors up,
    Jumps up & down as though on a trampoline,
    The balcony cracks like ice breaking and
    Takes a plunge, he holds onto his straw hat and
    Calmly waves as if he’s taking
    A glass-elevator to the ground floor
    .

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***

    Rachel Clyne: A Man Threw Knives at Me

    When the man at the bar said
    his assistant hadn’t turned up
    I thought, I know your game
    but my mouth was reckless
    and the words I’ll do it
    sprang from my lips.
    I told him I was an actor
    and could act scared.
    I stood in front of the target.
    He was blindfolded
    I was covered in paper
    and heard the thud
    of each knife
    as it hit the board.
    I kept repeating the scenario
    The trouble was
    I hadn’t learned to tell
    if knife-throwers
    always intended
    to aim for the board.

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    Jill Sharp: Staring at the Ceiling

    A voice close to my ear tells me he’s sorry
    if I’m still angry about what he’s done.

    It tells me he’s apologised time and again,
    taken responsibility for everything.

                            My eyes are tracing patterns in the Artex,
                            wave upon fine-combed wave.

                            Here, the semi-circles overlap;
                            there, they don’t quite touch.

    The voice is telling me he’s only human,
    that all of us make mistakes.

    It’s not as if he misbehaved on purpose,
    or intended to tell a lie.

                            It’s easy to imagine a fleet of sails,
                            or rows of dancing girls behind outspread fans.

                            It must take a practised hand to complete so many –
                            and wasn’t there asbestos in the mix?

    The important thing, he says, is to look ahead,
    get on with what really matters.

    More questions only keep us in the past;
    now we should just move on.

                           All that time up a ladder, holding steady,
                           keeping the rhythm right –

                           a narrow frame to neaten off the edges,
                           and a little flowery flourish around the light.

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    Benjamin Rosser: A New Refrigerator

    Her new fridge
    set as a giant gleaming jewel between
    clean countertop & faithful kitchen cupboards

    Icemaker
    amiable crispers bins & shelves
    cavernous freezer with sensible sliding drawer

    She’d paid cash
    using her hard earned own money
    smartly side-stepping debt & obligation

    The old fridge
    battered exterior puny packed interior
    bleeding cold & ice cube trays always plundered

    It was his
    revered bachelorhood relic
    when it failed she feared she’d lost everything

    She kissed
    her kitchen’s cherished crown jewel
    its powerful compressor cooling her mind

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    Anne Bailey: Love in a Cold Climate

     .

    The day you fell through the ice
    was remarkable for many reasons.
    For a start you never went on ice.

    You love ice in your drink,
    don’t mind when it rattles against
    your teeth. You put things on ice,

    slow them down so as not
    to have to make a decision
    but you’ve never climbed

    in the mountains, never skied.
    Sudden movement of any kind
    is not part of your repertoire.

    I don’t think you even knew
    you were on thin ice, you were smiling
    even up until the last moment.

    I could see your breath in the cold air.
    The outbreath an exclamation,
    a decree benevolently given.

    Clearly, you knew all about
    what was best for us.
    The shock as your eyebrows

    hit your hairline! You didn’t even
    have time to look down as
    the arctic water took you into itself.

    Anne Bailey: Unexploded

    It  is  compact,  tidy,  lives  in the  cupboard  under  the  stairs,  doesn’t  need  a lot
    of exercise.   I do  take  care  of  it,  I  check  it  frequently,  make  sure  it’s  content,
    I stroke  it,  its  hard  shell, the  smoothness  there,  the  curves.  It  never  tells  me
    to  go  away.   It  likes the  attention.   Sometimes  I polish  it -- not like an Aladdin’s
    lamp,  more  like a  trophy with  my name  on it.  I don’t  want  anyone  to  know  I
    have a  bomb.  It  marks me  out  as  different  from  other  people  and  I’ve  never
    met  anyone  else  who  has a  bomb,  well not  like mine,  but then   they probably
    wouldn’t  be  letting  on  about  it either.  I  never  sit on it  or  kick it  around,  I like
    to  respect  its  personal  space,  an  homage  to  how  perfectly  formed  it is.  I talk
    to it  about  anything  that is  bothering me.   Do you  know,  it  seems  to take  it in.
    It  gets warmer  at these  times and  on the  surface it sort of glows. I can’t imagine
    not having a bomb.It is good for me, all contained and private there,inside its shell.

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    Lydia Harris: Reliquary

    The lid blew off in 1953.
    Listen to the book inside:
    it talks about itself.

    Its voice a swan’s pinion,
    each oak-gall letter balances
    from a line.

    It is the size of a sparrow
    in the oak grove or the roof light
    in the passage at Hammers.

    Sister scribe wrote in the margin:
    Can you hear me scrape this nib?
    One more thing…

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Simon Alderwick’s poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Magma, Dust, Anthropocene, Poetry Salzburg, Ink Sweat & Tears, Acid Bath, Cape, The Telegraph, and Acropolis.

Anne Bailey is a Yorkshire woman now living and writing poems in North Norfolk. She has had her work published in Ink Sweat and Tears, Brittle Star, Obsessed with Pipework, Lighthouse The Moth and Under the Radar journals. She is a committee member for ‘Cafe Writers’ organising live poetry events in Norwich. Her poem was commended in the Ambit 2021 Poetry Competition and her first pamphlet What the House Taught Us was published in winter 2021 by Emma Press.

Chrissy Banks lives in Exeter. Her latest collection is The Uninvited (Indigo Dreams, 2019) and a pamphlet, Frank from the Poetry Business. Poems recently in The Rialto, the Alchemy Spoon, the Journal and One Hand Clapping.

Bruce Barnes, formerly of the Big Smoke, is cooling off in Bradford West Yorkshire. His most recent pamphlet, Israel-Palestine published by Otley Word Feast Press is part recollection and part travelogue, following a return to those countries after 50 years

Martin Bennett lives in Rome. He was 2015 winner of the John Dryden Translation Prize. His work has appeared in Stand, The London Magazine, Agenda and elsewhere,

Lesley Burt’s poetry has been published widely in magazines, including in Tears in the Fence (TITF), Prole, The Interpreter’s House, Sentinel Literary Quarterly and online, including by the Poetry Kit, The Poetry Shed, The Blue Nib and Ink, Sweat and Tears. She is a member of the TITF workshop and Festival groups.

Michael Caylo-Baradi is an alumnus of The Writers’ Institute at the Graduate Center (CUNY). His work has appeared in The Adirondack Review, Another Chicago Magazine, The Galway Review, Ink Sweat and Tears, Hobart, Eunoia Review, Third Wednesday Magazine, MigoZine, and elsewhere. He has also written reviews for New Pages, The Halo-Halo Review, Kenyon Review, Latin American Review of Books (UK), PopMatters, among others. He is the author of Hotel Pacoima, released by Kelsay Books in 2021.

Rachael Clyne is from Glastonbury and is widely published in journals. Her collection, Singing at the Bone Tree (Indigo Dreams), concerns our broken relationship with nature. Her pamphlet, Girl Golem (www.4word.org), draws on her Ukrainian Jewish heritage. She has expanded this into a collection, You Will Never Be Anyone Else, which explores relationships and her queer identity.

Robert Cole has an interest in astrophysics & theology since studying at Kingsway College, High Holborn in the early 1970’s.His second full length collection Simoom is forthcoming from Littoral Press.

Tony Dawson has lived in Seville since 1989. In 2013, he published his first poem Critical Survey. After a seven-year hiatus, he took up writing again during the pandemic and has published over 40 items, mostly poems. His work, so far, has appeared in print in Critical Survey, Poems-for-All, Chiron Review, and Pure Slush, as well as online at Loch Raven Review, London Grip, The Five-Two, The Syndic Literary Journal, Horror Sleaze and Trash, Cajun Mutt Press, Poetry and Covid, Beatnik Cowboy, Retreats from Oblivion, Home Planet News, (in the latter case in both Spanish and English) and Literally Stories

Philip Dunkerley lives in Bourne, Lincolnshire where he runs a local poetry group. He takes part in open-mic readings and other activities whenever he gets the chance. A fair number of his poems have made their way into magazines, webzines and anthologies – London Grip, Magma, Poetry Salzburg Review, Acumen and IS&T, among others. He reviews for Orbis and has translated poems into English from both Spanish and Portuguese

Alan Dunnett’s poems appear in Poetry and Settled Status For All (2022 anthology), Ink Sweat & Tears, Apocalypse Confidential, Dodging The Rain, Mono, The Crank, The High Window. He wrote/voiced the film-poem Interrogation, Best Experimental Film at the Verona International Film Festival 2019. A collection, A Third Colour, was published by Culture Matters in 2018.

Josh Ekroy lives in London. His collection Ways To Build A Roadblock is published by Nine Arches Press.

Lydia Harris has made her home in Westray, one of Orkney’s north isles. Her first full collection, Objects for Private Devotion has just been published by Pindrop.

Norton Hodges is a poet, editor and translator. His work is widely published on the internet and in hard copy. He is the author of Bare Bones (The High Window Press, 2018). He lives in Lincoln UK.

Jackson was born in Cumbria, England, and currently lives in Australia and New Zealand. Her four full-length collections include A coat of ashes (Recent Work Press 2019), based on her PhD, and The emptied bridge (Mulla Mulla Press 2019). The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry includes her work. thepoetjackson.com

Jon Kemsley has been published in Neon, Eratio, the Metaworker, New Reader, New World Writing and elsewhere. He lives and works on the south coast of England and occasionally remembers to call his brother about whatever it was he promised to do last time.

David Keyworth has been published in Orbis, South Bank Poetry and elsewhere. He is included in the anthology Poems for Grenfell Tower (Onslaught Press, 2018) and the related geolocated sound installation – Voice of Trees – by Giovanna Iorio. He is also included in The Best Ever Book of Funny Poems (Pan Macmillan, 2021). He was awarded a New Poets Bursary in 2013 by the Northern Writers’ Awards (New Writing North). His debut pamphlet, The Twilight Shift, is published by Wild Pressed.

Rustin Larson’s poetry appears in Wild Gods (New River Press 2021). Recent poems have appeared in London Grip, The Lake , Poetry Space and Lothlorien Poetry Journal. His Chapbook The Cottage on the Hill was published by Cyberwit.net in April 2022

Sarah Lawson, an American-born Londoner, has published poetry in many magazines and anthologies and in two collections published by Hearing Eye, Below the Surface and All the Tea in China. Most recently is a novel, The Bohemian Pirate, available from Amazon.

Clifford Liles lives in Hereford but has travelled, lived and worked in several countries throughout Europe and in Australia. His poems have been published in Acumen, Orbis, Poetry Salzburg Review (forthcoming), London Grip, The Cannon’s Mouth and Dream Catcher. His collection of poems The Thin Veneer was published by Dempsey & Windle in July 2022.

Maria C. McCarthy was the winner of the Society of Authors’ Tom-Gallon Trust Award 2015. She writes poems, stories and memoir. She has published three of her own books, and edited many others. www.medwaymaria.co.uk

Hilary Mellon has been involved in the poetry scene since the early 80s, read at venues all over the country, judged several poetry competitions and is very widely published. She lives in Norwich, where she runs writing workshops and sometimes works as a life model.

Anna Mioduchowska grew up on stories of war, occupation and exile. Their spectres are awakened in her with each armed conflict in the news, and never more so than by the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine. Her work has appeared in many anthologies and literary journals, and she has published two poetry collections. She lives in Canada.

Kate Noakes’ next collection is Goldhawk Road and is forthcoming from Two Rivers Press in spring 2023. She lives in west London and is finishing her PhD in contemporary British and American poetry.

Keith Nunes (Aotearoa/New Zealand) has had poetry, fiction, haiku and visuals published around the globe. He creates ethereal manifestations because he’s inept at anything practical or useful.

Lisa Reily is a former literacy consultant, dance director and teacher from Australia. Her writing has been published in several places, including London Grip. You can find Lisa at lisareily.wordpress.com

Marilyn Ricci is a poet, playwright and editor. Her poetry has appeared in many small press magazines including Magma, The Rialto and Modern Poetry in Translation. Her pamphlet, Rebuilding a Number 39, was published by HappenStance Press and her first full collection, Night Rider, is available from SoundsWrite Press. Her latest poetry sequence, Dancing At The Asylum, is available from Quirky Press.

Benjamin Rosser is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Saskatchewan where his areas of researcher and teaching were, respectively, cell biology and human anatomy. His poetry has recently been published in Consilience Journal. He currently resides retired in Ottawa, Canada, with his wife and children

Gordon Scapens has been widely published over many years in a variety of magazines, journals, anthologies and competitions. He refuses to take himself seriously. He lives in a suburb of Preston with his wife, who’s friend, critic, muse and editor. He plays acoustic guitar averagely to her singing.

Jill Sharp’s poems have appeared most recently in The Frogmore Papers, Under the Radar and PERVERSE, as well as on the Mary Evans Picture Library poetry blog. Her pamphlet, Ye gods, was published by Indigo Dreams, 2015, and her work was featured in a six-poet anthology, Vindication, from Arachne Press, 2018. She was a runner up in the 2020 Keats-Shelley Prize.

Michael W. Thomas’s latest collection is Under Smoky Light (Offa’s Press, 2020). He lived in Canada for many years and now lives in Worcestershire. His work has appeared in The Antigonish Review, Critical Survey, Under the Radar & The TLS, among others. For several years he was poet-in-residence at the Robert Frost Poetry Festival, Key West, Florida. Website: www.michaelwthomas.co.uk

Pam Thompson is a writer and educator based in Leicester. Her publications include The Japan Quiz ( Redbeck Press, 2009) and Show Date and Time (Smith| Doorstop, 2006) and Strange Fashion (Pindrop Press, 2017). She is a 2019 Hawthornden Fellow.

Nadira Wallace writes: “I am a doctoral researcher at Royal Holloway, University of London and have written literary reviews for Tears in the Fence, The Interpreter’s House, The Modernist Review and SPAM Magazine. My creative work has been published in Shearsman magazine, Love Spells & Rituals for Another (Independent Publishing Network, 2021), AWW-Struck (Poem Atlas, 2021) and exhibited in Greece (Text-Isles, Art Park Gallery, 2021). I also had an academic article on magnificent diction recently published in Textual Practice.”

Sue Wallace-Shaddad’s short collection A City Waking Up was published by Dempsey and Windle (October 2020). Shortlisted in 2021 for the Plough Poetry Prize, she has poems published by Artemis, London Grip, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Fenland Poetry Journal and The Ekphrastic Review among others. Sue has an MA in Writing Poetry (Newcastle University/Poetry School, London). She writes poetry reviews and is Secretary of Suffolk Poetry Society. Website https://suewallaceshaddad@gmail.com

Judith Wozniak has an MA in Writing Poetry. Her poems have appeared in London Grip The Alchemy Spoon, South, Sideways, The Frogmore Papers and These are the Hands NHS Anthology. She won first prize in the Hippocrates Competition, 2020. Her pamphlet, Patient Watching, was published by Hedgehog Press in January 2022

#### 1 Comment

1. 2022 publications – Jackson
   14/02/2024 @ 03:23

   […] The closed blinds […]

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